


Panic-inducing joy

by qwertysweetea



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Comfort, Comfort/Angst, Emotional, F/M, Feelings, Fix-It of Sorts, Force Bond (Star Wars), Hormones, Panic Attacks, Post-Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, Pregnancy, Rey (Star Wars) is a Mess, Self-Doubt, Soft Ben Solo, Tenderness, Unplanned Pregnancy, both rey and myself
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-04
Updated: 2020-01-04
Packaged: 2021-02-27 13:15:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,413
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22117735
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/qwertysweetea/pseuds/qwertysweetea
Summary: Rey finds out she's pregnant and has a panic attack, suddenly full of hormones, self-doubt, and fear; Ben is there to try to calm the storm.[Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker spoilers(but only super light spoilers because I decided to ignore one of the major events at the end of the film, and a certain somebody mentioned isn't dead.]
Relationships: Rey/Ben Solo, Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
Comments: 3
Kudos: 93





	Panic-inducing joy

**Author's Note:**

> When Disney runs low on ideas and inevitably make another trilogy in ten or so years based around this kid, I'll be waiting for my cut.

There is panic before the joy. Rey was sure that she was meant to feel joy. Instead, she found herself sat in the corner with her head in her hands and a gut-wrenching sob on her tongue; an eruption of relief and happiness, terror and heartbreak. It came all at once, a typhoon of emotion that she didn’t have the time to brace for let alone channel elsewhere.

The thought of starting a family had crossed her mind frequently when she was younger, long before it was a possibility, as she scavenged for food and longed for a family. Even once or twice as the war raged that maternal yearning darted through her mind, if only for a few fleeting seconds, leaving her feeling guilty and empty when they left.

It could have only have been a couple of weeks at most but she knew. There is no swelling or movement, no obvious signs but she felt it regardless. It was subtle but the press of it was there; the universe was screaming it to her, it ripped the air out of her lungs in a way which is so often described as pleasant and affirming by centuries of story-tellers. To Rey, it felt like choking on a mass of nothing, like trying to breathe in an airless vacuum.

She wanted to be a mother as much as she always had, but the world had been chaotic enough that it pushed the desire to the most vacant and barely visited parts of her mind. They haven’t been trying, nor had they been avoiding; they rarely saw each other enough to consider it a possibility. Since the moment after victory was declared, they had focused on simply existing, healing, resting, and allowed the rest to fate.

As the world has started to settle over the decade since the war, they had tried to settle also. She strived to live in simplicity; her training continued with the hope of becoming a master to a new group of Jedi, sometime when she felt worthy enough to carry the title. Despite everything she had experienced and the insistence of her friends from the former-rebellion, she didn’t feel any more like a master of the craft than Ben looked like one.

Months would go by without seeing each other beyond the fleeting connections their minds made.

“Are you still on Tatooine?” He would ask.

And she would nod in reply, continuing to meditate or scrub profusely at whatever machine parts she was trying to fix.

“I’m coming to see you.”

She'd feel him long before he arrived at her door. Sometimes she would run out to meet him with arms open and a smile on her face; other times she would stand at her door with arms crossed and a pout on her lips, a complaint scratching at her throat.

"My friends had to leave earlier than planned because of your impatience."

"I would have visited you earlier in the month, had you not insisted town would be too quiet after the annual celebrations for me not to be spotted."

"You didn't have to visit at all." She would insist.

He would be able to hear the insincerity in her voice, and his responding laugh would trigger her own.

It’s hard being bound to a war criminal, almost as hard as it is to live up to the Skywalker legacy. She found with the former, as with the latter, it was a hardship she would happily embrace. The world wasn’t ready to accept him; they could both understand that. Neither were completely sure the world was ready to accept more Jedi's just yet either. By now, Jedi's had started to become synonymous with approaching war.

Life in the post-war haze had been hard but beautiful in its own way.

The revelation hadn’t been beautiful, nor simple. It had been terrifying. Her stomach flipped over and over, sea-sickness on solid ground; she tried to find purchase on the wall by placing her forehead flat against it but found that it wasn’t anymore grounding than the chill of the floor against her feet, nor his strong arms around her shoulders as he tried to steady her through her convulsing sobs.

Tears sprung hot from her eyes and drool touched her lips as her sobs drowned out the delirious sobs that laced them. _What I am going to do now? What is there to do? How could I have done this?_

Ben didn’t speak; he took her hot cheeks in his hands and mopped the streams as they fell. It calmed the typhoon to a storm, not lacking in intensity but breathable. It’s enough to make her malleable and with a swift trail of his hands down to her wrist he pried Rey’s hands away from the toned ridges of her stomach long enough to cover it with one of his own.

Ben’s press was firm, unrelenting. The storm cleared enough, just enough.

“You feel it.” It wasn’t a question, though he felt like it should have been. The disbelief in his voice broke through the control. “I’m not just dreaming, you really feel it too.”

She nodded, lip still trembling with the effort to hold back leaking tears; blotchy and sticky, nose running and hair matted to her forehead with sweat; chest heaving with the effort not to break again.

Glowing; beautiful; the light of his life; mother of his child.

“I’m going to be a father.” It left his lips on a sign.

“I can’t do this.” It splintered in her throat, exhausted and pitiful, blubbering and heaving like a child overcome with guilt. Her eyes didn’t rest on anything too long, worried that the spin would tip her back over the edge.

Ben fought to catch her eyes with his own. “Rey. Rey look at me. Please.” He begged. Not since the war has he had occasion to truly beg for her. His voice was thick with her pain, deeper with the strain of it.

In an instant, she locked eyes with him. “My parents gave me up. They left me…" Her words rushed an unrefined; a culmination of decades of half-formed doubts that'd plagued her for as long as she could remember. They spilled out now, the dam broken. "I never had parents to show me what to do. What if I don’t know what to do? What if I screw this up?”

“I know you’re scared but I also know we can do this. Maybe not on our own but together w-.”

“What if they’re filled with darkness?” She snapped back, regret already tainting the words as they fell from her lips, wet and heavy. “Like you were. Like I almost was. What if it happens again and we can't stop?!"

It hit like a blow, he would have recoiled from it had the hand pressed over the small bundle of cells that would become their child not rooted him where he was.

“You know better than anyone that our choices have never been preordained. We’re strong like our parents were, and they’ll be strong like us. You’re parents gave you up because they never gave up on the idea that you could be a good person; my parents never gave up on us because they knew the light was stronger. They weren’t perfect, no parents are and we won’t be either but they’ll grow at the hands of a teacher who knows how it feels. Understand, nurturing, someone who will remind them every day that they aren’t alone.”

He paused, holding his cheek firm with his free hand, giving her no choice but to look into his eyes.

“We’ll flood them with so much honest love and understanding, the dark with have nothing to seduce them with. I promise.”

Relief started to win over her expression in a soft and subtle way, just touching the corners of her eyes, and Ben pulled her into his chest with his free hands, hiding his face in the crook of her neck and allowing her to do the same. The press of her sorrow on his mind and the heaving of her chest against his slowed with her tears. His hand, trapped between, still held her stomach like he couldn't bear to let go just yet.

"Just so you know-" he added tentatively "-twins run in my family."

There was a singluar chest heave, detached from the rest, and that time he swears it was not a sob.

**Author's Note:**

> Rey and Ben begin the long, arduous process of raising a child not to be a total f*ck-up like there grandfathers where. If they’re lucky, they’ll balance out so perfectly the kid won’t even be force sensitive… but that’s one hell of a longshot.


End file.
